A variety of materials are desirably maintained at a predetermined temperature for various purposes. For example, sensitive materials such as pharmaceutical products are often stored and/or shipped in powered refrigeration units to keep the pharmaceutical products at a particular temperature that will keep the products from degrading and becoming unusable.
When pharmaceutical products are removed from a refrigeration storage unit and transported for use (e.g., to hospitals) they are often transported in an insulated container overnight which may or may not contain, for example, ice (i.e., frozen H2O) or dry ice (i.e., frozen CO2). However, such passive methods of transportation often allow the temperature of the products to vary more than desired and do not typically keep the temperature of the products within the desired range for a long enough period of time, thus requiring the shipping period to be shorter than may be desired (e.g., an overnight shipping period as opposed to a 72 hour desired shipping period).
As an alternative, a portable or semi-portable container with an internal active power and temperature regulation system to regulate the temperature within the container can be used. The active power system may include a battery and a refrigerant system, which adds to the complexity and weight of the container and may not have a desired level of reliability (e.g., the battery may discharge at a faster rate than desired). Another alternative is to use an external power source, such as a gasoline powered generator or external battery, which plugs into a temperature regulation system, in order to regulate the temperature within the container. This requires porting the external power source along with the container.
It is desired to have a lightweight, highly reliable, portable container that maintains the temperature of pharmaceutical products or other temperature sensitive materials over a relatively long or given period of time. For pharmaceutical products/materials for example, it is desired to maintain thermal stability to allow the material to ultimately be administered to patients many hours or days after they were first placed into the container.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional, traditional, and prior proposed approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems and methods with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.